Tvheadend

Apparently the only way to get over the air schedules is to sign up for an account ... and pay $25 per year.

Not at all true, you can use zap2xml to get free schedule information. One place that tells how to do it is at https://freetoairamerica.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/some-hints-for-getting-free-to-air-satellite-channels-into-the-electronic-program-guide-in-kodi-or-xbmc-or-another-frontend/ and while it talks about satellite channels, the information is equally valid for NTSC over the air channels.

Now at this point I still did not see a schedule in the EPG tab, and got sidetracked into following several threads down rat holes, but it's working now, so maybe it just took a while to populate.

You must reload the web page, or in some cases perhaps even close and reopen your browser to see EPG changes. Another thing to try is to set the grabber to "no grabber", Save, then set it back to what it should be and save again. This forces a rescan of the schedule data. And be sure to reload the web page again after doing that. Switching tabs is NOT sufficient, you must actually reload the page.

Also, I understand that the upcoming 4.2 version of TVHeadEnd is supposed to have some kind of configuration wizard that should make setup easier.

Thanks again K, I updated the "How to" above. Please let me know if anything else needs updating.

Hmm, now I see all the Live TV schedules in OSMC/Kodi, but can't start live video.

I see "There seems to be a problem with the live update feed from Tvheadend. Trying to reconnect..." in the tvheadend system log.
Under the "Status", "Connections" tab I see a red X next to HTSP.

Ideas?

Only things I can suggest are make sure TVHeadEnd is running (try a reboot) and also make sure you did not create or change a rule under Access Entries that is preventing Kodi from connecting. Note that if Kodi is running on the same system as TVHeadEnd and you do use an access rule then your "Network Prefix" setting needs to include both your local network and the local loopback address - a typical example might be:

192.168.1.0/24,127.0.0.1/32

Assuming your local network has addresses in the 192.168.1.x range.

I tried a bunch of stuff and completely hosed my system, so I rebuilt it from scratch. It only took about 5 hours this time. This also gave me the opportunity to test out my instructions, and update them above. I updated the network settings as noted and rebooted.

I am still getting the HTSP communications issue and can see the program guides in OSMC "Live TV" but can't view live TV.

I am running OSMC 2016.02-3
Tvheadend 4.07

Thanks,

-W

I don't think this is a Tvheadend issue. It looks like there is some HTSP incompatibility between the OSMC Tvheadend client and Tvheadend 4.07 server. Apparently the fix is to install a newer version of Tvheadend (4.09?) on the OSMC image, but I was not able to do that last night before I destroyed my system and had to rebuild.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=137316

... time passes ....

I tried wiping out the OSMC build and re-installing OpenElec, but got stuck at the XMLTV step. Apparently OpenElec does not support EPG, as there is no XMLTV plugin and OpenElec OS does not support apt-get. If there is a solution, several hours of googling did not find it and I don't want to write a bunch of scripts and services.

Next I will try an older version of OSMC.

I hate OpenElec because it tries so hard to keep you away from anything having to do with the system. If you go the route of using zap2xml to get schedule data then you only need to add the tv-grab-file script into the directory with the other grabber scripts, ASSUMING that there is a bash shell available on the system, which there probably is not in OpenElec because they seem to think your system belongs to them, not you.

I suspect that you are just not doing something right in OSMC but since I don't run that I can't tell you what it might be. But here is the question I have for you: Is it possible on a Raspberry Pi to run basic Raspbian, then install TVHeadEnd from their repo, and install Kodi from the standard Raspbian repo? To me that seems like the way to do it if you want to avoid the issues associated with full packages such as OSMC or OpenElec. But my caveat there is while I am sure this would work in standard Debian and probably even better under Ubuntu, the fact that the Raspberry Pi runs an ARM-based processor means you can run into all kinds of weird issues that you just won't experience on a machine that runs an Intel-based processor. For example many ARM-based systems, and I don't know if the Raspberry Pi is included, run something called "busybox" to provide many standard Linux commands, and at times those commands just don't work in quite the same manner as the same commands used on a standard system would. In any case Raspbian is not exactly the same as Debian or Ubuntu, so that could be part of the problem, or maybe not.

Have you tried posting about this problem in the OSMC forums at https://discourse.osmc.tv/ ? Maybe they could help you figure out why you're getting stuck.

The older OSMC distros wouldn't boot, so I am back to the latest version. I have been avoiding it but yes I will sign up on the OSMC forum and see if anyone there can help.

Well, I have a pretty good handle on Tvheadend now and the instructions above should be solid.

Yeah, I may end up trying to install the latest standard Kodi and Tvheadend on Raspbian. I think I need to buy another SD card so I don't have to rebuild again just to try something new...

Thanks again,

-W

The HDHomerun Extend + Raspberry Pi 3 + Kodi + Tvheadend + XMLTV + Schedulesdirect system seems to be working great other than the viewing live TV issue. No problem, I don't need the DVR for that. I can see the TV schedule, and record shows from both the OSMC interface on the TV, or from my computer using the Tvheadend web site. I can watch the recorded shows on the TV.

I signed up for an account on the OSMC site and posed the live TV issue there, but they don't seem to have an answer or workaround so I suppose I will just have to wait for the next release. It's working fine for my purposes now though so maybe I just wont worry about it.

OSMC pushed an update today which seems to have fixed the issue with viewing Live TV in the Tvheadend client.

I was successful up to the point;

- "tv_grab_na_dd --config-file /home/osmc/.xmltv/tv_grab_na_dd.conf" to build the config file.

It told me there was no login information, to use --configure, so that's what I did, though did not enter a password in the config file

Rerunning the above command resulted in (abbreviated);

syntax error at /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_dd at line 928

consider using --dropbadchar or Capture xml with --dd-data

line 928 is;

- eval { $twig->parse( $dd_data ) };

So I set dropbadchar = 1, and reran the --configure.

Same error code.

Any ideas where to go to from here (?)

Did you sign up for an account st http://www.schedulesdirect.org/ and then edit /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_dd and replace all references of docs.tms.tribune.com to dd.schedulesdirect.org ? Also, you probably aren't doing this, but don't type the quotes in the instructions.

When you run the config the first time it will ask you a bunch of questions including your loginID and password. This creates the config file. The config file should be /home/osmc/.xmltv/tv_grab_na_dd.conf . Check that to see if it looks ok. Probably if you don't give it a password there will be an error...

This system has been working pretty well for me. It looks like the Tvheadend client could still use some polishing. It can display the schedules, but when you click on a show nothing happens. I would think that would bring up a dialog to give you the opportunity to record a show. Also in the recordings section where you choose recorded shows to play, there should be an option to delete the recorded show. I have been doing both of these things from the OSMC web app, which works fine for me but is not so friendly for computer neophytes.

Also I received the WD 314GB Pi drive, but I don't think I need it. The 32GB memory card is plenty big to hold a bunch of recorded shows.

-W

I went ahead and ran again:

tv_grab_na_dd.conf --configure

Added the password this time, then ran;

tv_grab_na_dd --config-file /home/osmc/.xmltv/tv_grab_na_dd.conf

Had to reboot a few times (and protect the .conf file), but now everything appears to working well from Kodi on down. Added an external usbdrive (had to adjust permissions), and that seems to be working well now too.

Thanks for your excellent work on this, it has really been a major help!

This is an excellent post. Thanks, @W Beauchamp
I'm new to all this and am still in my research phase. I have an RPi2, RPi3 and a CuBox-i4Pro. My CuBox-i4Pro is already running OpenElec so I am thinking about trying to setup the TVheadend add-on and configure. My plan is to have this setup as my backend server only. I already have an Amazon TV stick running Kodi that maps to a NAS for my media content. My only question, right now, is if I do setup the backend like I plan can those recorded files just be moved (I would setup a shell script on a cron schedule) to my NAS to be viewed via Kodi?

I have been running TVHeadend for over a year. My setup is Ubuntu running on a NUC Intel v5 I3. The server has Kodi 17, Emby and TVHeadend installed. I have HDHomerun running on the network. I use a modified version of the zap2xml perl script that puts a ton of info into the guide. It works with zap2it.com that I have a free login account. A cronjob is setup to run every morning to get 13/14 days of calendar data. It caches most of it and purges/re-grabs the next 3 days. A recent change to zap2xml was for zap2it not having detailed info (EP data) on all events. I receive an Error Code 500 for these cases, but my script handles that.

As for moving files, yes, you can, but TVHeadend will complain and list the file as missing. It also has bugs that do that as well, so no biggie. I have my Emby server point to the TVHeadend folder and catalog the TV shows automatically. These shows are available on the internet from my Emby media server.

If I have a chance, and you are interested, I can post the zap2xml files I use.

George Kazaroth wrote:

I have been running TVHeadend for over a year. My setup is Ubuntu running on a NUC Intel v5 I3. The server has Kodi 17, Emby and TVHeadend installed. I have HDHomerun running on the network. I use a modified version of the zap2xml perl script that puts a ton of info into the guide. It works with zap2it.com that I have a free login account. A cronjob is setup to run every morning to get 13/14 days of calendar data. It caches most of it and purges/re-grabs the next 3 days. A recent change to zap2xml was for zap2it not having detailed info (EP data) on all events. I receive an Error Code 500 for these cases, but my script handles that.

As for moving files, yes, you can, but TVHeadend will complain and list the file as missing. It also has bugs that do that as well, so no biggie. I have my Emby server point to the TVHeadend folder and catalog the TV shows automatically. These shows are available on the internet from my Emby media server.

If I have a chance, and you are interested, I can post the zap2xml files I use.

Sure, I would love to get those zap2xml files.
I'm still in the building phase. I purchased the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-955Q USB stick for my PC. I decided to use an actual PC instead of using the CuBox with Ubuntu 16.04 Desktop and Kodi 17 and TVHeadend installed. But since I only need the backend, I may just rebuild my PC with Ubuntu 16.04 Server so that there is no desktop environment overhead for the TVHeadend PVR backend.
That's a good idea to have your Emby server point to your TVHeadend machine, I'll probably do that. Because the Amazon TV Stick is so damn slow on performance, I've seen it choke on the large 6GB .ts file TVHeadend generates. I'm planning on replacing the Amazon TV stick with a Roku and will probably use Plex and have it point to my TVHeadend server. I haven't got as far yet to research if Plex will see those .ts files or not.

sounds like fun. I agree that any server app should not be running on a stick. From performance, my Intel i3 runs around 4% idle (mostly Kodi), 12% with TVHeadend recording and Kodi playing a different video. I normally play directly from mount points. If you play from Emby or some other app, you will need to have ffmpeg compiled with Intel Quick Sync or something similar. It cuts the translation performance by a factor of 10! You mention *.ts files, but I generate *.mkv files which are smaller. I did have a NAS setup initially where TVHeadend would record directly to the NAS via SMB mount points. Now the NUC is a NAS, so it writes directly to the RAID and then any device even Fire Stick can play it back. You only need about 10-14 Mb/s per channel, so almost any network can handle a number of channels. FYI... HDHomeRun is not supported on Roku directly due to licensing issues. You have to run the data feed through a translation like Emby, Kodi or Plex. I have a feeling many of the sticks are in the same boat.

Again, I have a number of server apps on the little NUC, so you really don't need to divide into many servers. I installed the normal version of Ubuntu with the desktop (I needed that for Kodi). It runs around 30 watts according to my APS UPS. It has the NextCloud Server app, the Emby Server app, the TVHeadend server app and Kodi. And then all the small cronjobs and background apps. All of that and it still runs under 25% CPU. I recommend Kodi/Emby instead of Plex, but that is upto you. Really checkout Emby, it is really active and is extremely nice.

The zap2xml is based on the perl project at
http://zap2xml.awardspace.info/
I wrap it to give more info into the GUI front end and to help with genre factoring. I'll repackage it for redeployment this week.

I recently came across this article that takes another approach to doing this sort of thing, using satellite TV tuners instead of a HDHomeRun, although I think some of the information would be use for HDHomerun/TVHeadend users:

The never final, always subject to revision article on how to build a Satellite TV PVR distribution system using TVHeadEnd - https://freetoairamerica.wordpress.com/2016/11/24/the-never-final-always-subject-to-revision-article-on-how-to-build-a-satellite-tv-pvr-distribution-system-using-tvheadend/

Not everyone has the room or inclination to put up a satellite dish, but if you think you might ever want to, you will probably want your backend to be able to accept PCIe cards, which means that a Raspberry Pi or even a NUC won't do. However, those living in rural areas with a limited over-the-air channel selection may want to consider something like this, particularly if you are into electronic or technical type stuff.

The other thing I will say about Raspberry Pis is that they tend to chew through SD cards if you do a lot of reads and writes to the card. This is their main drawback, I think. I had a SD card fail in a Raspberry Pi after only a few weeks of use recently, so I really don't trust them at all. Those that insist on trying to use a Pi should make regular backups, and keep a spare SD card on hand that can be swapped in when the first one fails. The Pi itself is a nice little device, if a bit underpowered (though I've not yet had a chance to use the new Pi 3) but I do sometimes wish you could boot and run them from a hard drive, or even a SSD, rather than the much less reliable SD cards (which were originally designed for storing photos on digital cameras, and similar uses).

George Kazaroth wrote:

sounds like fun. I agree that any server app should not be running on a stick. From performance, my Intel i3 runs around 4% idle (mostly Kodi), 12% with TVHeadend recording and Kodi playing a different video. I normally play directly from mount points. If you play from Emby or some other app, you will need to have ffmpeg compiled with Intel Quick Sync or something similar. It cuts the translation performance by a factor of 10! You mention *.ts files, but I generate *.mkv files which are smaller. I did have a NAS setup initially where TVHeadend would record directly to the NAS via SMB mount points. Now the NUC is a NAS, so it writes directly to the RAID and then any device even Fire Stick can play it back. You only need about 10-14 Mb/s per channel, so almost any network can handle a number of channels. FYI... HDHomeRun is not supported on Roku directly due to licensing issues. You have to run the data feed through a translation like Emby, Kodi or Plex. I have a feeling many of the sticks are in the same boat.

Again, I have a number of server apps on the little NUC, so you really don't need to divide into many servers. I installed the normal version of Ubuntu with the desktop (I needed that for Kodi). It runs around 30 watts according to my APS UPS. It has the NextCloud Server app, the Emby Server app, the TVHeadend server app and Kodi. And then all the small cronjobs and background apps. All of that and it still runs under 25% CPU. I recommend Kodi/Emby instead of Plex, but that is upto you. Really checkout Emby, it is really active and is extremely nice.

The zap2xml is based on the perl project at
http://zap2xml.awardspace.info/
I wrap it to give more info into the GUI front end and to help with genre factoring. I'll repackage it for redeployment this week.

Thanks for that.
So, I am a little confused on how to setup EPG using zap2it. I created a free account, setup my favorite channels. Now what? Do I need to run 'tv_find_grabbers' command? If so, what do I run for zap2it? Also, I'm assuming that perl script is used (via cron) to just update the schedule everyday?

Your question is how to setup TVHeadend using zap2it.
1) Grap the zap2xml.pl file from the URL above and place in ~/xmltv/
2) Use attached .zap2xmlrc file. Set email/password and username and place in home folder ~
3) create an xmltv_default.xml file by running the command
./zap2xml.pl -D -S 3
rename resulting xmltv_default.xml to xmltv.xml
4) Now the key to making it all work... softlink the xmltv folder to where tvheadend is installed. For me it is installed in /home/hts (where the .hts folder is located.) To make the softlink type
sudo su - hts
ln -s /home/<user>/xmltv .xmltv
This should create a .xmltv folder in /home/hts pointing to where your xmltv.xml file is being generated.
5) In TVHeadend website, goto Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> EPG Grabber
6) I have the settings check "Update Channel Number". Periodically save ... = 0. Cron multiline: I have the following
0 5 * * *
0 8 * * *
0 12 * * *
Which pulls in the xmltv.xml file at 5am, 8am and 12 noon every day
BEFORE you click save, click on the 3 ^ in the bottom right corner. It brings up the tvheadend console window. Now click Save. If it works, you should see something like
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: channels tot= 55 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: brands tot= 0 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: seasons tot=22195 new=22195 mod=22195
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: episodes tot=22975 new= 9363 mod=17387
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: broadcasts tot=22975 new= 425 mod= 425
SUCCESS!
You now have your EPG filled with info which you can link to channels.

Additional info. First, you can use the xmltv.xml to download the icons, but I highly recommend finding good ones on the internet. The icons auto retrieved are fuzzy at best and if they are listed in the xmltv.xml, tvheadend will force their use. Just fill out the Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> Channels (icon column).
EX: "file:///home/<user>/xmltv/icons/4.1.png"
Also, my perl script I wrap around the zap2xml.pl will add more info to the description and sub-title, and map the genre to support Kodi/TVHeadend which causes pretty colors based on tv show type all over your guide based using what those apps expect.

Hope this helps.

George Kazaroth wrote:

Your question is how to setup TVHeadend using zap2it.
1) Grap the zap2xml.pl file from the URL above and place in ~/xmltv/
2) Use attached .zap2xmlrc file. Set email/password and username and place in home folder ~
3) create an xmltv_default.xml file by running the command
./zap2xml.pl -D -S 3
rename resulting xmltv_default.xml to xmltv.xml
4) Now the key to making it all work... softlink the xmltv folder to where tvheadend is installed. For me it is installed in /home/hts (where the .hts folder is located.) To make the softlink type
sudo su - hts
ln -s /home/<user>/xmltv .xmltv
This should create a .xmltv folder in /home/hts pointing to where your xmltv.xml file is being generated.
5) In TVHeadend website, goto Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> EPG Grabber
6) I have the settings check "Update Channel Number". Periodically save ... = 0. Cron multiline: I have the following
0 5 * * *
0 8 * * *
0 12 * * *
Which pulls in the xmltv.xml file at 5am, 8am and 12 noon every day
BEFORE you click save, click on the 3 ^ in the bottom right corner. It brings up the tvheadend console window. Now click Save. If it works, you should see something like
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: channels tot= 55 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: brands tot= 0 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: seasons tot=22195 new=22195 mod=22195
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: episodes tot=22975 new= 9363 mod=17387
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: broadcasts tot=22975 new= 425 mod= 425
SUCCESS!
You now have your EPG filled with info which you can link to channels.

Additional info. First, you can use the xmltv.xml to download the icons, but I highly recommend finding good ones on the internet. The icons auto retrieved are fuzzy at best and if they are listed in the xmltv.xml, tvheadend will force their use. Just fill out the Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> Channels (icon column).
EX: "file:///home/<user>/xmltv/icons/4.1.png"
Also, my perl script I wrap around the zap2xml.pl will add more info to the description and sub-title, and map the genre to support Kodi/TVHeadend which causes pretty colors based on tv show type all over your guide based using what those apps expect.

Hope this helps.

Fantastic. Thank you so much, George - Kazaroth

George Kazaroth wrote:

6) I have the settings check "Update Channel Number". Periodically save ... = 0. Cron multiline: I have the following
0 5 * * *
0 8 * * *
0 12 * * *
Which pulls in the xmltv.xml file at 5am, 8am and 12 noon every day

I don't understand why you would do this. The listing are only updated once a day, so either you are pulling in the same xmltv.xml file multiple times (which is kinda dumb, but harmless I guess) OR you are running the zap2xml program multiple times in a day, which is wasteful and selfish. The listings are only updated once a day, and we are using them in a manner not really intended, and if too many of us do this too many times in a day, the site operator may try to obfuscate the listings in such a way that the zap2xml program will no longer work. There is no good reason to ever run zap2xml more than once a day, and polite users will NOT run it right at the top of the hour (as they used to say in the radio business) but instead at some other random minute within a semi-random hour (early AM is probably good, or any time that's not during prime time anywhere in North America) so that not everyone is pounding their servers at once. People who think only of themselves when using this type of software are the reason some web-based service go away, since they do have to pay for server costs and data charges (probably minuscule for a single user running the software once a day, but if everyone gets greedy it could add up).

PLEASE do not hammer their servers, we'd like to see this service keep working!

Excellent point. Only grap the xmltv.xml once a day. I do it between 3-5am. The zap script works extremely well and you normally can count on it daily. How you run it also determines the load on the zap2it server, so lets take a look at the parameters from the .zap2xmlrc file attached above that help reduce the load. In the .zap2xmlrc, we set nsdays=0 (don't remove any cache days from the end) and ncsdays=2 (only remove 2 cache days from the front). This means that out of the 14 days that are cached, only 2 days are refreshed, so the other 12 days are reused and the server will not be contacted. On the command line, there is a "-S 3" This option causes the script to request information from the server at 3 second intervals. Without this option, the server is hammered at 100-200 requests per minute. Being nice helps everyone.

So why am I pulling the same xmltv.xml 3 times a day if it is the same !#@$ file. Well, all you have to do is have TVHeadend miss a show due to not processing the file correctly, and you will do the same thing. Last issue I saw was last weekend, one week before the DST change. All shows shifted back one hour when the xmltv.xml file loaded on Sunday. So the 7pm show was going to record at 6pm. That would stink. Reloading the xmltv.xml file corrected the issue. NBC also has a nasty way of changing times 24 hours before they show. I have seen multiple times in Kodi 16 when the slots had 30 minute shows where it only partially updated and sections were left blank. I have not seen it on Kodi 17, but I have not had it long. Again, reloading multiple times fixed this issue. If you want to only load the file into TVHeadend once a day and even change Kodi from reloading "the exact same data" every 120 minutes to once a day, go for it. This type of issue is always considered very low priority and rarely fixed unless a higher issue somehow causes the fix to be implemented.

Sorry about the delay in getting the rest of the information. I was finishing up the development updates to Pandora for Kodi called Pandoki. Anyway, if you want to update the xmltv.xml to include the tvheadend genres, my project will do this. It is located at
https://github.com/rocky4546/script.xmltv.tvheadend/wiki
With the files to pull by clicking on the Code tab.
Enjoy!

George Kazaroth wrote:

Your question is how to setup TVHeadend using zap2it.
1) Grap the zap2xml.pl file from the URL above and place in ~/xmltv/
2) Use attached .zap2xmlrc file. Set email/password and username and place in home folder ~
3) create an xmltv_default.xml file by running the command
./zap2xml.pl -D -S 3
rename resulting xmltv_default.xml to xmltv.xml
4) Now the key to making it all work... softlink the xmltv folder to where tvheadend is installed. For me it is installed in /home/hts (where the .hts folder is located.) To make the softlink type
sudo su - hts
ln -s /home/<user>/xmltv .xmltv
This should create a .xmltv folder in /home/hts pointing to where your xmltv.xml file is being generated.
5) In TVHeadend website, goto Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> EPG Grabber
6) I have the settings check "Update Channel Number". Periodically save ... = 0. Cron multiline: I have the following
0 5 * * *
0 8 * * *
0 12 * * *
Which pulls in the xmltv.xml file at 5am, 8am and 12 noon every day
BEFORE you click save, click on the 3 ^ in the bottom right corner. It brings up the tvheadend console window. Now click Save. If it works, you should see something like
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: channels tot= 55 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: brands tot= 0 new= 0 mod= 0
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: seasons tot=22195 new=22195 mod=22195
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: episodes tot=22975 new= 9363 mod=17387
xmltv: /usr/bin/tv_grab_file: broadcasts tot=22975 new= 425 mod= 425
SUCCESS!
You now have your EPG filled with info which you can link to channels.

Additional info. First, you can use the xmltv.xml to download the icons, but I highly recommend finding good ones on the internet. The icons auto retrieved are fuzzy at best and if they are listed in the xmltv.xml, tvheadend will force their use. Just fill out the Configuration -> Channel / EPG -> Channels (icon column).
EX: "file:///home/<user>/xmltv/icons/4.1.png"
Also, my perl script I wrap around the zap2xml.pl will add more info to the description and sub-title, and map the genre to support Kodi/TVHeadend which causes pretty colors based on tv show type all over your guide based using what those apps expect.

Hope this helps.

So, following your direction, after step 6, from the console I see this:

2017-03-11 14:54:11.382 /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_tvmedia: grab /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_tvmedia
2017-03-11 14:54:11.386 spawn: Executing "/usr/bin/tv_grab_na_tvmedia"
2017-03-11 14:54:11.716 spawn: You need to configure the grabber by running it with --configure
2017-03-11 14:54:11.721 /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_tvmedia: no output detected
2017-03-11 14:54:11.721 /usr/bin/tv_grab_na_tvmedia: grab returned no data